Cold-atom Inertial Sensor without Deadtime

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a continuous cold-atom inertial sensor that eliminates dead times, significantly enhancing sensitivity and stability for rotation measurements, and paving the way for quantum noise-limited performance.

Contribution

It introduces a joint interrogation scheme enabling continuous operation of cold-atom inertial sensors, reducing noise aliasing and dead times, and achieving record sensitivity and stability.

Findings

Record rotation sensitivity of 100 nrad.s$^{-1}/\,\sqrt{Hz}$

Rotation stability of 1 nrad.s$^{-1}$ after 10,000 seconds

Improved short-term sensitivity and long-term stability

Abstract

We report the operation of a cold-atom inertial sensor in a joint interrogation scheme, where we simultaneously prepare a cold-atom source and operate an atom interferometer in order to eliminate dead times. Noise aliasing and dead times are consequences of the sequential operation which is intrinsic to cold-atom atom interferometers. Both phenomena have deleterious effects on the performance of these sensors. We show that our continuous operation improves the short-term sensitivity of atom interferometers, by demonstrating a record rotation sensitivity of $100$ nrad.s$^{-1}/\sqrt{\rm Hz}$ in a cold-atom gyroscope of $11$ cm$^2$ Sagnac area. We also demonstrate a rotation stability of $1$ nrad.s$^{-1}$ after $10^4$ s of integration, improving previous results by an order of magnitude. We expect that the continuous operation will allow cold-atom inertial sensors with long interrogation time to reach their full sensitivity, determined by the quantum noise limit.